Yellow jacket freedom fighters spreading to London

michaels

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

Putting aside for a moment that the issue of nature versus nurture with regards to intelligence is hugely contentious, I already posted that assistance or incentivisation for having more children should be extended to a larger cross section of society.

I'm more than happy for well educated middle earners to be given more financial support to have kids, the point is that we need to have more kids, urgently, and most especially urgently if there is any fall in net migration.



This isn't about needing more people, it's about needing broadly the same number of people in each age bracket so the young can replace the old in adequate numbers for society to function.

In the next decade or two the number of pensioners will increase by 25%, while the number of working age people (even if we keep net migration at the current 250,000+ per year) will increase by just 1%.

This is a crisis, a proper demographic timebomb that is already going off, for the NHS, for pensions, for the wider economy, for the care system, for government finances and servicing the national debt, for employers ability to keep their businesses going, for just about everything in society.

It has to be addressed urgently and there really is no other solution than breeding more young people or importing them.

Good, so lets import those who add most to society whilst also imposing a limit that prevents society from becoming fractured by a too rapid rate of change especially given how poor we are at potting the necessary infrastructure in place.

Makes sense to have a policy where we take the most productive from the whole world rather than simply allowing whoever wants to come from a small region that has resulted in a skewing of the income distribution in favour of the middle classes at the expense of the unskilled.

michaels

ukcarper wrote: »

New technologies could impact the number of working age people we need.

At the moment extending life expectancy means the only way we could hope to keep proportions of working and dependents the same is with a rapidly growing population. Rather than extrapolating unlimited population growth forever, isn't part of the solution to accept that at some point we will have to cope with a changing mix?

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

ukcarper wrote: »

New technologies could impact the number of working age people we need.

History shows they don't though.

I remember when the advent of the computer was supposed to make vast swathes of administrative jobs redundant, when ATM machines were supposed to make all the bank cashiers redundant, etc, yet here we are today with all-time record high employment and record low unemployment.

Maybe 'it's different this time', but history also shows that people uttering that expression about economic fundamentals are almost always wrong...

Nasqueron

michaels wrote: »

Good, so lets import those who add most to society whilst also imposing a limit that prevents society from becoming fractured by a too rapid rate of change especially given how poor we are at potting the necessary infrastructure in place.

Makes sense to have a policy where we take the most productive from the whole world rather than simply allowing whoever wants to come from a small region that has resulted in a skewing of the income distribution in favour of the middle classes at the expense of the unskilled.

We wouldn't need EU migration if British people would do the jobs like fruit picking and hotel cleaning. I saw figures today that around 80,000 seasonal EU workers do farm work in the UK, if these jobs were being taken up by British people they wouldn't need to come here.

kabayiri

Herzlos wrote: »

But if the state doesn't suitably encourage it (i.e. fund it), then we'll just need to import workers to keep up with the replacement rate, yet that's unpopular.
...

I feel confident that in 10/20/30 year's time there won't be the same number of jobs around.

Automation will play a part in this. We haven't seen the next wave of intelligent machines yet.

Also, there are signs that the consumption culture may be changing. People are eschewing goods in favour of travel experiences.

I suspect there will be a lot more pressure on all of us to reduce consumption over the coming decades.

That will have a knock on when it comes to jobs.

We should be looking much further ahead in the debate as to how we allocate labour in the future.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

michaels wrote: »

At the moment extending life expectancy means the only way we could hope to keep proportions of working and dependents the same is with a rapidly growing population.

That's not entirely true.

We should at least aim for replacing ourselves on a 1 to 1 basis.

And after that we can deal with (as we have been for decades) the consequences of growth in average life expectancy, which has finally started to slow and by some reports may have ended.

Rather than extrapolating unlimited population growth forever, isn't part of the solution to accept that at some point we will have to cope with a changing mix?

We've already been coping with a changing mix as we've been underbreeding for many decades, 30 years ago there were 5 workers for every 1 pensioner, today there are just 3.

But the decline is now beyond our ability to cope, employment is at record highs, the average tax burden is higher than it's been for decades, unemployment is at record lows, there are labour shortages across huge sections of the economy, etc, and the situation is rapidly worsening.

itwasntme001

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

History shows they don't though.

I remember when the advent of the computer was supposed to make vast swathes of administrative jobs redundant, when ATM machines were supposed to make all the bank cashiers redundant, etc, yet here we are today with all-time record high employment and record low unemployment.

Maybe 'it's different this time', but history also shows that people uttering that expression about economic fundamentals are almost always wrong...

You are just choosing what was said back then about new technologies to suit your argument. What about the ability to make lightening speed of potentially a huge amount of calculations using a computer? The ability to collaborate more easily at work? Having information at your finger tips? Being able to communicate in ways never thought of before with colleagues half way across the world?


These are the things that have been enabled with the advent of the computer for mainstream office use. Technology will improve and innovate as long as the conditions are there for it to do so. If there is enough incentive then there could very well be vast technological advancements to help with the changing demographics of the western world.


Just don't read the newspaper to get predictions of how the world will change in 20 years .

kabayiri

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

History shows they don't though.

I remember when the advent of the computer was supposed to make vast swathes of administrative jobs redundant, when ATM machines were supposed to make all the bank cashiers redundant, etc, yet here we are today with all-time record high employment and record low unemployment.

Maybe 'it's different this time', but history also shows that people uttering that expression about economic fundamentals are almost always wrong...

Soon there will be no bank branch in our village. Looking at other towns in the area, this picture is being repeated.

Bank cashiers were redeployed previously, but without the branches their numbers will decrease.

Hundreds of thousands of people used to work in typing pools. The advent of computers has replaced all of them.

The next wave will be much faster and wider. It will be different this time.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

kabayiri wrote: »

I feel confident that in 10/20/30 year's time there won't be the same number of jobs around.

Indeed.

I'm confident there will be more...

And I have thousands of years of history and the actual played-out experience from numerous technological revolutions on my side.;)

Enterprise_1701C

We simply cannot continue to depend on a high rate of population growth, it is not practical. There would come a time when we could no longer breathe or eat because we would have concreted over most of the country.

Now, I know a lot of people seem to think we should concrete over the country, but we need green for food, for producing oxygen and for our psychological wellbeing among other things. Look at some of the African countries and multiply that by a thousand if you think that an ever increasing population would be good for this country.